Loveland, Colorado
(970) 775-7376
ONLINE MIXING AND MASTERING 
Chimaera Sound Studios is a premier audio complex serving local and touring artists with our staff of certified recording, mixing, and mastering engineers who have experience in all styles of music and audio projects ranging from country to punk, jazz to voice-over, or even classical to folk. And now, no matter where you are, we’re here to help you to achieve your vision.

Just like our in-house artists, it doesn’t matter if you’re a professional artist, a first-time band, an experienced producer, or if you’ve recorded your first demo at home, we’ll deliver the same attention to detail and quality that we give to every in-studio project.
Top-5 reasons to choose Chimaera to mix and master your music:
  1. All of our engineers are certified professionals with academic and intern experience, who worked their way “up-the-ranks” to become full charge engineers. Even if our engineers have been trained elsewhere, they still have to be “Chimaera” certified before they get to run your project.
  2. Our staff manages both in-studio and online projects. We manage full projects everyday and always remember that we provide a “service”. We work with all of our clients with the same respect and dedication regardless if they are recording in our studio or submitting their art from their home.
  3. The gear: yes, we have the toys. And we continue to invest in our infrastructure on a regular basis. Analog Compressors, EQ.s, Filters, Parametrics combined with an expansive library of software allow us the flexibility to apply the right tools for your music.
  4. Producers are available to all of our clients – at no extra fee. Having a producer work with the engineer guarantees that we manage the project to your specifications. And, it gives our clients another resource to create the right direction or just to bounce ideas around.
  5. Quality comes first. We serve the music. Just like our in-studio clients, we pride ourselves on the quality of our work and the satisfaction of our clients.

Mixing & Mastering

Unlike many online mixing offerings we perform our craft in a professional acoustically designed mixing and mastering room with a variety of top-of-the-line monitors and equipment that allows us to hear very clean articulate representation of your music and our work. And, we don’t just slap a bunch of plugin presets for EQ and levels; we take the same approach we use for all of our in-studio projects, and we utilize all of our resources (analog and digital) to get the right sound for you. 


We start each project with a Free Review and Assessment.

Once you submit your project to us (with as many notes as you can provide) we’ll assign your project to your personal engineer and producer. They’ll review the entire project and contact you to discuss their insights and recommendations - and together we’ll agree on what needs to be accomplished. Then we start…


Then each element is Edited (removing pops, hums, odd noises, etc.), Timing and Pitch Corrections are made to compensate for instruments and vocals. Once the source tracks are ready we move on the Mixing process utilizing boutique outboard gear and digital utilities and effects. Our goal in mixing is to achieve a true sense of balance, presence, and impact.  It doesn’t matter how great you can master a song if the mix isn’t done right! 


Mixing and Mastering Projects starting at $135.00

Prices vary based on number of songs and number of tracks


Prices Range from  $135.00 to $440.00


Mastering

A lot of people think that mastering is simply a matter of making things louder.

Yes, overall balanced volume is part of the mastering process, but before we get to that, each song is examined and set of tasks are applied to make the song ready for publishing.  We’ll also look at the overall body of work to make it consistent (the difference between a single song and album). Application of additional EQ and compression, remove all of unwanted frequencies or the expansion of frequency ranges, mastering effects that will enhance the composition, and manipulation of levels will create a more dynamic, stereo enhanced sonic image that will bring the most out of your music.


Mastering Only Projects starting at $75.00


Prices vary based on number of songs

Prices Range from  $75.00 - $399.00


The Process

Submit / Upload

When you have your song fully recorded, you can either use the upload transfer tool on this site or you can send them with a file transfer tool of your choice (Drop Box, Files with Friends, We Transfer, etc.)  If you choose to send us your files with your preferred transfer solution just make sure to give us authorization to access and down load the content.

Consultation

Once we receive the project, we assign your engineer and producer, who will review the content and then schedule a call with you to talk about their impressions and also to gather more information from you.  It’s always a good idea to think about some references, such as, “I really love the way drums sound on album X”…things like this.

We will then let you know what the fixed price will be. Then we send an online invoice for 50% up front.


We start the work!

Our team will execute the project according to your specifications.


Review

Once the mix or master is complete, we will send a notice for you to download your new project. WE strongly urge that you listen to it in a variety of ways; Listen to it on your personal mobile device with ear-buds or head phones, listen to it in the car, play it on a home stereo system. One thing to keep in mind is to take a look at the settings of the system you use to review the project. Lots of people have their car stereo pumped up with bass or treble, and others may have huge bass speakers at the house, which could give a false sense of “too much bass”. We recommend that you set your EQ and boost levels to a flat range. This way you can hear exactly what the mix or master really sounds like.


Changes:

Yes, we can make changes to the final project. We’ll need specific comments so that we can address the issues you may hear. Sometimes it might be as simple as, “The bass is a little too present”, or, “can you make instrument X brighter”. Other requests might be geared towards enhancements, “we’ve been listening to track X and we’d like reverb or delay on this instrument or that word”.


Completion / Download:

Once we have an approved mix and you are 100% happy, we will send you a final online invoice, once the invoice is paid we will send the final mix package. This will include all versions.


Time to upload

Once you’ve purchased a mixing or mastering project with us, you can select the Upload tab and then submit your content.


Here are a few tips to help with the upload submission:

  1. Make sure that each song are in their own folders . Please name the folder  the same as the song title.
  2. Be sure to read our FAQ sheet to learn about file formatting and requirements.
  3. Add as much detail to the notes section as possible.
  4. We will email you to schedule a review call with you – please take notes as well. 
  5. Copyrights for cover songs and pre-pay royalties need to be coordinated prior to submitting any works requiring such clearances.
  6. If you are using beats or backing tracks, please provide us with a copy of the user license agreements.
  7. Double check your submitted content. We wouldn’t know if a song is missing from the album.
  8. Please provide full song names, credits, or other meta-data that you might want embedded in the master. Also remember to provide us with the song order, as you want them to appear on a larger body of work.

UPLOAD FORM
FAQs
Got a question? We’re here to help.
  • What do I need to send to you?

    Truly, the easiest thing to do is to export each of your tracks from your preferred DAW as WAV files.  These are known as ‘stem files” (Stem files would be a combination of the raw source track and any outboard gear, effects, or software used to manipulate the sound). You will need to select all of your tracks with the same Start and End markers and ensure they are all the same length. This will ensure that when we drop your stems into our DAW, everything will be aligned properly.

  • Can you send me a copy of your work session?

    When we perform a mix or master, we use a combination of our hardware and software. Chances are, you wont have the same resources that we have, so delivering a copy of the session would not provide any value to you.

  • Can I send you Bus tracks for Mixing or Mastering?

    First, a Bus track is normally a stereo track to which multiple individual tracks have been routed.  For instance, with drums, you could send the tracks for a kick drum, snare, toms, cymbals, room microphones, etc. and rout them all to one stereo Bus. 


    We can then Master against all of the individual Bus tracks (drums, bass instruments, vocals, guitars, keyboards, etc.) and have greater effect against stereo placement, levels, effects, etc.)


    The only thing you have to remember is that once you send multiple tracks to one bus, we cannot perform specific treatments to specific tracks.  We suggest that you do not do this for mixing. But providing up to 6 Bus Tracks for Mastering does give us greater flexibility.


    ** Note: Lead instruments or vocals tracks should never be bussed together with other tracks. We need to be able manipulate placement of the lead lines independent from the rest of the mix.


  • EQ, Comp, & Effects in the mix and master?

    Here are a couple of things to think about when deciding whether or not to put effects on your tracks:

    • Do you have really clean high quality effects?
    • Is the sound achieved with your effects representing something that we might not be able to replicate?
    • EQ: Unless you are using your EQ as an effect (extremely scooped mids, shadow images, 808 bass, etc.) probably best not to apply EQ to your tracks
    • Compression: we’d prefer not to have compression applied to individual tracks and definitely not to Bus tracks
    • Compression EQ and Effects for mastering: please remove everything from your master Bus before exporting.

  • What file types (formats / settings) do we need to send you?
    • File Format: WAV format
    • KHZ: 48
    • Bit: 24  
    • Note ** If mastering for CD production, render pre-master WAV files at 44.1KHZ-16 Bit
    • DB Level: Average Peak should be no higher than -5DB.
    • Master Stereo Bus: Should be at Unity Gain - 0DB
    • ** Adjustments to attain average peak of -5DB should be made to individual tracks and bus channels
    • Master inputs: Do not add any compression, EQ, or other utilities, effects, or processors to the master 2-track stereo bus. 
    • Dithering: DO NOT add dithering controls against the master 2-track stereo Bus

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